My weekend started early this week, a visit to Cheltenham on Friday to watch the horses. I had a thoroughly enjoyable day with the lads, the sun shone and the Guinness flowed and I only ended up about £20 down on my bets which is good for me lol. On Saturday I messaged Gerry Welsh to book in for the match at Windmill, I'd left it late as I wasn't sure about plans. In the end my wife got over covid and I took her out Saturday and we spent some money at Cadbury Garden Centre. On the way home I popped into Premier Angling and grabbed a pint of red maggots for the match. Then watched the Gas on iFollow with Glenn Bailey, another win, whooo hooo!
Sunday morning feeling fresh as a daisy I went to Wetherspoons in Kingswood for brekky again, slightly different in there this week. Last Sunday it was quiet and peaceful, this week it was not busy but it certainly wasn't quiet. There were three girls in there who had clearly not been to bed yet from Saturday night and were very loud, the duty manager was not happy with them but somehow kept his cool. I ate my brekky as fast as I could and got on my way.
At the fishery and no Gerry today, but Nick Sanders and Steve Salter were running the show, 16 fishing today so that was better. The draw was ready but we were waiting for one angler to arrive, my Thatchers Preston Innovations team mate Shaun Townsend, who duly arrived. Time to grab a milk bottle top, and with everyone saying you still need to be down on 10, 12 or 14 I went and drew bang opposite end on 25. Still it is generally a decent peg and when I came here in January I drew this peg and won. That day Nick Sanders was on peg 1, and amazingly he was on peg 1 again today. Shaun wasn't happy drawing 18 again which has been really poor.
I set up on the peg to the left of the dodgy pallet platform, and took a look around. It was tight pegging with 24, 23 and 22 in and with the point of the island 5 people could cast there in theory. Chris Davis was on peg 23 and said he felt like a sardine lol, always makes me laugh does Chris and had me in stitches with his latest jokes.
Last time on this peg I caught everything down the left hand margin by the reeds by dobbing, but with some colour in the water today I would have to feed some bait here. I set up a 4 x 12 Preston Carp Pellet float, with 0.15 to 16 GPM.
I set up a 0.5g Shipper Pole Float for fishing straight out in front at about 10m with an 0.10 to an 18 SFL. I was going to feed gbait and fish for skimmers / silvers here in case the carp weren't about. I did set up a straight lead but in the end I never picked that rod up today.
We started around 10am and I cupped in 4 balls of Sonubaits F1 Dark with some Thatchers at 10m, then fed some 4mm Pro feed pellets with a bit of corn 10m along by the reeds. I spent about 25 minutes by the reeds and never had a sign, which didn't give me a lot of confidence that there were enough carp in the peg to get in the money. I went in on the bait line with double dead red maggot but also never had a bite, by this stage I had only seen Nick on peg 1 catch a carp on the lead. I went down to a single live red maggot just to catch something, and I did start to get some 2oz roach, they weren't coming fast and when I caught 2 tiny perch I fed some more gbait. A few more small roach followed but really not great. I started to feed some red maggots over the top of this line, it was tricky to do so as the wind was blowing in towards me, so I used a cad pot some times as well as the catapult. After about 90 minutes I hooked a rudd on the drop, and about 15 minutes later I hooked another. I was really struggling to catch on the bottom, and in my head I was thinking I needed to be fishing up in the water where the water would be warmer. I got a 4x12 Chianti with 20 SFL to 0.10 with strung out stotz rig out and set the depth at about 4 feet, about half depth. I carried on feeding small amounts of red maggots and dropped the new rig in, well it was a good move as the float buried on the drop with a nice 4oz rudd. Back out again and a roach all on single maggot. I then had a nice couple of hours catching rudd and roach, the rudd were bigger, and just had to adjust the depth of the rig and feeding to try and keep them coming if bites went iffy.
It went right off after this, and I went on the deep rig to rest the upper layers. The bites were tiny and so were the fish here, but I did get a 6oz skimmer and a 2lb carp out of the blue. Back up shallow and the rest had done it good and the rudd were back. However, the wind that had created a good ripple now dropped and my bites almost stopped dead until the ripple came back but not as much as earlier. I was having to lay the rig in all over the place, in the feed, past it etc, to try to tempt a bite. I got a lucky break doing this, hooking a near 3lb bream shallow.
With an hour to go the wind dropped and never returned, I eeked out a couple of silvers, but went down the reeds at 14m to break the boredom and caught a couple of small carp and got snapped by one. The match ended with me swinging in a roach. I guessed I had 15lb of silvers.
Talk was of the other end of the lake being good again, but Nick on peg 1 had caught in his margins on and off all day and was admitting to 60lb. The scales started with Chris Davis and had to go all round the lake to get back to me and I would be the last to weigh. Top silvers was 6lb 12oz before I weighed, and so I was chuffed to put 16lb 2oz on the scales.
Nick Sanders did well to win the match on peg 1 with 73lb 13oz, he won last week too so has got the carp sorted at the moment. Full results sheet here.
Well that was fun, been a while since I have caught a net of fish like that, nice busy fishing that I find very rewarding when you have to work at it. I won't be fishing next weekend as I need to spend some time on the vegetable patch, got onions, parsnips, lettuce, carrots, beetroot, sprouts and beans to get sorted.
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